Koji Wakamatsu

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Japanese film-maker who recently returned to fame with movies such as United Red Army

Koji Wakamatsu was a Japanese film director of both fame and notoriety. He worked on erotic films before moving into more explicitly political fare, but a social and political awareness was apparent throughout his career, as was his inventive visual style.

Having won European admiration in the 1960s, Wakamatsu suffered a period of relative neglect, but returned to international fame with United Red Army (2007), about the 1972 Asama Sanso Incident, in which Japanese Red Army members holed up in a mountain lodge in the aftermath of a violent purge. The film won awards at the Berlin Film Festival. Caterpilla